The logo of the Alt-Right, as seen on a sign stand next to American white supremacist Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute (a white nationalist think tank based in Arlington, Virginia), who spoke at the alt-right press conference in Washington, D.C. last September.
Until recently, the alt-right was relegated to the cultural and political fringe consisting primarily of an obscure, largely on-line subculture. But after Donald Trump’s stunning electoral victory, its detractors feared that it could soon become a player at the very center of American politics. After all, alt-right activists were among Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, and in return, some believed that they deserved a seat at the table. Back in August of 2016, the alt-right was catapulted into national limelight when Hillary Clinton excoriated the movement, seeking to link it to her challenger in a much-heralded speech delivered in Reno, Nevada.1 That same month, Breitbart.com executive Steve Bannon had declared the website “the platform for the alt-right.”2 In the wake of Trump’s victory, Bannon joined Trump in the White House as a senior advisor. How did the movement gain traction in recent years? And now that Trump is president, could the alt-right change the American political landscape?
The Roots of the Alternative Right
To its critics, the alt-right is just a code term for white nationalism, a much-maligned movement associated with neo-Nazis and Klansmen.3 The movement, however, is more nuanced, as it encompasses a much broader spectrum of rightist activists and intellectuals besides white nationalists including those who believe in libertarianism, men’s rights, cultural conservatism, isolationism, and populism. Nonetheless, its origins can be traced to various American white nationalist movements that have endured for decades.
More than any other figure, the late Willis Carto was responsible for creating the semblance of a movement that came to be known as the far right in post-World War II America. Through the myriad of organizations he founded—Liberty Lobby, the Institute for Historical Review, and the Populist Party among others—he reached out to a wide array of rightists including white nationalists, Holocaust revisionists, conspiracy buffs, anti-globalists, and survivalists. But his big tent approach had only limited success and by the late 1990s was foundering. Furthermore, he was forced into bankruptcy in 2000, after losing a civil suit to a former subsidiary. A newspaper he launched—American Free Press—is still published, but its readership is limited. Carto passed away in 2015 at the age of 89.4 Although the various organs he established reached many rightists, some in the movement found his approach woefully unfit to gain credibility as a respected mass movement insofar as it seemed to be resigned to remain as an oppositional subculture. A number of well-educated rightist intellectuals sought to establish a new ideology capable of resonating with conservatives, especially young people.
Addressing the H.L. Mencken Club in 2008, Paul Gottfried described the “alternative right” as a dissident far right ideology that rejected mainstream conservatism. Gottfried—a conservative Jewish academic—previously coined the term “paleoconservative” in a rhetorical effort to distance himself and like-minded intellectuals from neo-conservatives who were becoming the dominant force in the Republican Party and broader conservative movement.5 The late Sam Francis, a former columnist for the Washington Times who was fired for his open advocacy of white nationalism, was regarded as the intellectual godfather of the paleoconservative movement. For years, he sharply criticized the Republican Party for its timidity, strategic myopia, and ideological bareness. Only a radical reorientation—a “middle American revolution”—could save the conservative movement and insure the European character of the nation.6 But the lackluster results of his friend Pat Buchannan in the 2000 presidential election, demonstrated the weakness of this approach at that time.
To be sure, some of the most radical elements of the far right have long advocated a revolutionary program. Groups such as the Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance, the National Alliance, and the World Church of the Creator have preached RAHOWA (racial holy war) against ZOG, or the “Zionist Occupation Government.” Many were inspired by the late William L. Pierce’s Turner Diaries, a novel about a race war that consumes America that was one of the inspirations for Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
But these exhortations to revolution did not resonate with most people. What is more, after 9/11, many of the revolutionary right’s leading representatives were prosecuted under new anti-terrorism statutes and sent to prison. By the mid-2000s, the far right appeared to have reached its nadir.
Richard Spencer and the National Policy Institute
Into this void stepped Richard Spencer and a new group of far right intellectuals. In 2005, William Regnery II—a wealthy and reclusive publisher—founded the National Policy Institute as a white nationalist think tank. A young and rising star of the far right, Spencer assumed leadership in 2011. A year earlier he launched the Alternative Right website and became recognized as one of the most important expressive leaders of the movement.
Around this same time, Spencer popularized the term “cuckservative” which has gained currency in the vernacular in recent years. In essence, a cuckservative is a conservative sellout who is first and foremost concerned about abstract principles such as the U.S. Constitution, free market economics, and individual liberty. Instead, the alt-right is more concerned about concepts such as nation, race, culture, and civilization. Working hard to rebrand white nationalism as a legitimate political movement, Spencer explicitly rejected the notion of racial supremacy and instead called for the creation of separate, racially-exclusive homelands for white people.7
Jared Taylor and American Renaissance
While Spencer became the youthful face of the movement, Jared Taylor was recognized as its elder statesman. An urbane, articulate Yale graduate, he founded American Renaissance in 1990 as a vehicle to defend the “group interests” of whites. Characterizing himself as “race realist,” Taylor has appeared in many media outlets warning that European-Americans were committing “unilateral disarmament” if they failed to recognize their interests when other racial and ethnic groups asserted their own. Stylistically, what sets Taylor apart from many others in the far right is that he does not impute sinister conspiracies as the motive force behind what he sees as the growing political, social, and cultural disempowerment of whites.8
The Perils of Immigration
The primary issue for white nationalists is immigration. They claim that high fertility rates for third world immigrants and low fertility rates for native women—if left unchecked—threaten the very existence of whites as a distinct race.9 But even on the issue of demographic displacement, there is disagreement in the white nationalist movement on how this predicament came about. The more genteel representatives of the alt-right, such as Jared Taylor, argue that these trends developed over time because whites have lost the temerity necessary to defend their racial group interests. By contrast, the more conspiratorial segment of the movement implicates a deliberate Jewish-led plot to reduce whites to minority status.10 By doing so, Jews would render their historically most formidable “enemy” weak and miniscule—just another minority among many.
Emblematic of the latter view is Kevin MacDonald, a former professor of psychology at the California State University at Long Beach. In a trilogy of books released in the mid-to-late 1990s, he advanced an evolutionary theory to explain both Jewish and anti-Semitic collective behavior. According to MacDonald, anti-Semitism emerged not so much out of perceived fantasies of Jewish malfeasance, but because of genuine conflicts of interests between Jews and their Gentile hosts. Inasmuch as anti-Semitic movements have often been collectivistic in orientation, MacDonald argued that Jewish intellectuals, activists, and leaders have sought to fragment Gentile societies along the lines of race, ethnicity, and gender. Over the past decade and a half, his research has been circulated and celebrated in white nationalist online forums.11
Conspiracism
Although conspiracy theories can be found across the political spectrum, they feature most prominently in the far right. Based in Austin, Texas, Alex Jones has emerged as the most noted proponent of contemporary right-wing Conspiracism. His popular platform—Infowars—has enabled him to reach a broad audience whom he regales with exposés implicating the U.S. government, secret societies, and globalists in sinister plots to undermine the fabric of nations.12 It is worth mentioning that Jones is not without his critics on the far right. For example, some white nationalists deride Jones as a charlatan because he implicates phantom actors—including the Illuminati13—in a nebulous conspiracy to subvert America. They accuse him of leading people down a blind alley—“chasing demons”—instead of identifying what they see as the “real enemy,” that is a Jewish-led conspiracy to destroy the white race.14
The Internet facilitated the spread of conspiracy theories that before had limited currency. Although critics—including U.S. News & World Report, Los Angeles Times, and Mother Jones—have characterized Infowars as a “fake news” website, the mainstream media in America have lost much credibility over the past several years.15 The failure of the mainstream press to report accurately on the depth of support for candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election will only compound this problem. Though it is difficult to determine with great specificity how important Jones was in persuading voters to support Trump, he steadfastly supported the GOP renegade in his primary and general election campaigns.
Although conspiracy theories have long resonated with the far right, the more respectable mainstream conservative movement eschewed this vocation—the Libertarian right, for example, focused instead on small government, individual liberty, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. But after its standard bearer Ron Paul failed to gain traction in his 2012 presidential bid, as did his son Rand Paul when he dropped out of the 2016 race early, the libertarian community became disillusioned. What is more, social and cultural issues became more pronounced in American politics. As a consequence, the libertarian preoccupation with free market economics began to look stale.16 A new form of rightist ideology began to take form. The growing popularity of the new media was instrumental in this development.
A Growing Media and Internet Presence
Cyberspace became one area where white nationalists could exercise some limited influence on the broader culture. The subversive, underground edges of the Internet, including 4chan and 8chan, allowed young white nationalists to share and post comments anonymously. The alt-right has become an integral part of the meme and trolling culture in cyberspace. Through the use of memes, the alt-right has established a notable presence in the virtual world. Appropriating “Pepe the Frog,” the alt-right used humor and invective to reach out to young people who might find the political correctness of the dominant culture stultifying.17 Moreover, the growing number of blogs, wikis, and discussion forums enabled them to participate in the national discourse. Even on mainstream news sites such as USA Today, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, ordinary readers—including white nationalists—could troll the comments sections below articles.18
Rendition of Pepe the Frog, by 9vj (own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
More important, new media outlets emerged online that began to challenge their mainstream competitors: Drudge Report, Infowars and, most notably, Breitbart News. Founded by Andrew Breitbart in 2007, Breitbart News was intended to serve as a conservative outlet that would seek to influence both politics and culture. For Breitbart, conservatives did not adequately prioritize winning the culture wars—conceding on issues like immigration, multiculturalism and political correctness—which ultimately enabled the political left to dominate the public discourse on these topics. As he noted, “politics really is downstream from culture.”19
Bannon used Breitbart News to attack not only Democrats, but Republicans as well. He skewered mainstream conservatives for their preoccupation with economic issues and small government, while ignoring illegal immigration, global trade deals that hurt American workers, cultural progressives, and Washington cronyism.20 These positions resonated with many white nationalists, some of whom became fellow travelers with Breitbart News. But it would be misleading to characterize Breitbart News as a white nationalist vehicle for no other reason than its largely Jewish roots.
Yes, Breitbart News has become popular with white nationalists. But the site has also unapologetically backed Israel. Since its inception, Jews—including Andrew Breitbart, Larry Solov, Alexander Marlow, Joel Pollak, Ben Shapiro, and Milo Yiannopoulos—have filled leading positions in the organization.21 In fact, in recent months, Yiannopoulos, a self-described “half Jew” and practicing Catholic—who is also a flamboyant homosexual with a penchant for black boyfriends—has emerged as the movement’s leading spokesman on college campuses (though he denies the alt-right characterization).22
Milo Yiannopoulos—The “Dangerous Faggot”
On his self-proclaimed “Dangerous Faggot” tour Yiannopoulos regales packed audiences with his forceful critique of political correctness, Black Lives Matter, feminism, and “social justice warriors,” delivered with verve, biting sarcasm, and panache. When faced with hostile protestors and audience members, he is a master of forensic jiu-jitsu. His lectures mix performance with political commentary. Although Yiannopoulos does not characterize himself as part of the men’s rights movement, he has emerged as the movement’s most noted spokesman. The so-called “Manosphere” is a generic term to characterize a community of men who are disillusioned with modern, or “third wave,” feminism. Yiannopoulos’ track record displays a clear affinity for the movement. Revealing titles in his Breitbart News articles include “Science Proves It: Fat-Shaming Works,” and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”23 Back in 2014, he gained notoriety for his role in the “gamergate” controversy when he supported the online harassment campaign against women who decried the violence and misogyny in video games.24 More recently, he generated a free speech controversy in July of 2016, when Twitter permanently revoked his account after he used the platform to disparage what he saw as the radical feminist undertones of the new Ghostbusters film and one of its stars in particular, Leslie Jones, who was subjected to racial harassment from some of his followers. At a campus lecture in the summer of 2016 he declared his birthday “World Patriarchy Day” and opined that if patriarchy does indeed exist, then “thank God it does!” He is fond of citing the feminist scholar Camille Paglia, who once mused that “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”25
Yiannopoulos dismisses the racist charges against the alt-right as overwrought and appears to relish the fact that the mainstream media seem determined to crown him the “queen of the movement.”26 But it is undeniable that Yiannopoulos has done much to promote the alt-right and steer new recruits its way.27 According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Yiannopoulos is the person “who propelled the alt-right movement into the mainstream.”28 And he used his influence to rally for Trump. Even after the embarrassing “hot mic” episode transpired that Trump had made crude remarks about groping women years earlier, Yiannopoulos never wavered in his support for his favorite candidate, to whom he affectionately refers as “daddy.”
In retrospect, much of the opposition to Yiannopoulos seems to have backfired insofar as it bestowed more notoriety on him, which he craves. In January 2017, a subsidiary of Simon & Shuster gave Yiannopoulos a $250,000 book advance for his memoirs, Dangerous. In retaliation, the Chicago Review of Books announced that it would not review a single Simon & Schuster book in 2017.29
To be expected, some hard core elements of white nationalism have rejected Milo and his message. Writing in the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin called Milo “a subversive and a disease.” He feared that he would hijack the alt-right and destroy it from within by making the movement tolerant of Jews and race-mixing. For these reasons, he called for a “final solution to the Milo problem.”30 Though still marginalized, hard-core white nationalists figure prominently in the alt-right.
White Separatism
Sometimes referred to as the “1488rs,” the revolutionary white nationalists believe that America will eventually collapse under the weight of racial strife.31 Some internal critics in the alt-right characterize them as the equivalent of Black Lives Matter supporters insofar as they both call for the total destruction of the current order and seek to replace it with a revolutionary new order.32
But how should white nationalists achieve their goals in an America that is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to be majority non-white by the year 2042?33 Some activists insist that only a separatist course will ensure white racial survival. To date, the most formulated strategy has been advanced by Harold Covington, who founded the Northwest Front in the early 2000s as a vehicle for the creation of an all-white homeland in the Pacific Northwest. Given current demographic trends he argues that it is foolish to pursue a strategy that seeks to return America to a white majority population. Instead, by concentrating the assets of the white nationalist movement into a smaller area, Covington reasons that their goals have a greater likelihood of success. Beginning in 2003, he published a series of five novels based on a white separatist insurgency in the Pacific Northwest. Set in the not-too-distant future, the novels extol the exploits of the Northwest Volunteer Army, which mounts a war of attrition that eventually persuades the U.S. government to relinquish limited territory. In 2010, Covington began broadcasting an Internet radio program called Radio Free Northwest in which he exhorts Whites to relocate to the Pacific Northwest to form a community of like-minded activists.34
Often characterized as “the new face of hate,” Mathew Heimbach has emerged as the most articulate voice of White separatism in the United States over the past few years. Although he is only in his mid-twenties, he is an accomplished orator and an indefatigable organizer, frequently giving speeches at rallies and appearing on television news programs. He first gained notoriety in 2012 when he organized a White Student Union at Towson State University in Maryland. Since then, he founded the Traditionalist Youth Network which calls for the division of the United States into separate ethnically and culturally homogeneous autonomous states. Although most of his followers are white nationalists, he has reached out to separatists from other ethnic and racial groups. At the present time, he sees the Appalachian area as the most fertile ground for his white separatist aspirations.35 Seeking to establish ties with like-minded activists overseas, Heimbach identifies himself as the leader the Eurasian movement in the United States. The recognized leader of the Eurasian movement in the world is Alexander Dugin, a political theorist in Russia.
Alexander Dugin and the Fourth Political Theory
Ironically, a Russian named Alexander Dugin has emerged as one of the most important political theoreticians in the alt-right movement.36 In essence, Dugin seeks to forge a broad coalition of dissidents from across the political spectrum, including communists, separatists, and even fascists, to resist American global hegemony. Inasmuch as the U.S. government is viewed by the “identitarian” movement37 as the primary vehicle for an anti-white agenda around the world, it is not surprising that Dugin would find some well-wishers among the alt-right. Much of Dugin’s anti-Americanism stems from his strident critique of liberalism. According to Dugin, the American liberal ideology with its emphasis on individual liberty, when taken to its extreme ultimately abolishes all forms of collective identity and therefore is a destructive force that ruins nations. To be effective against U.S.-led globalism, a movement must be undergirded by a dynamic ideology that he has christened as the “Fourth Political Theory.” As he explains, liberalism, communism, and fascism represented the three main political ideologies of the last century. With the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, fascism was discredited. In that same vein, the collapse of the Soviet Union undercut the credibility of communism. Thus only liberalism remained, as presaged in Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 article, “The End of History?” As Fukuyama explained, more and more governments around the world were converging on a capitalist/democratic model.38
As an alternative, Dugin’s “The Fourth Political Theory” draws upon what he sees as the best elements of each of the aforementioned ideologies. From communism, Dugin accepts much of Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism and the merits of socialism. From fascism, Dugin recognizes the importance of nationalism, or togetherness, but categorically rejects the kind of biological racism that assumes that some peoples are superior to others. From liberalism, Dugin borrows the ideals of justice, equality, and freedom. Although the Fourth Political Theory is ostensibly concerned first and foremost with Russia, Dugin maintains that the ideology is inclusive to people everywhere. For as he explains, in the contemporary world, it is unrealistic for any single nation or sole individual or limited group of people to stand up alone against America. For this reason, the Fourth Political Theory must be a collective effort that marshals a broad-based coalition of disparate political activists to come together to resist the new world order under the aegis of the United States.39 Of course, the dissolution of America could be welcomed by Vladimir Putin and Dugin, for it would eliminate Russia’s most formidable geopolitical rival. But after Trump’s victory, Dugin struck a much more conciliatory tone. He saw it as a watershed event in which the American people had risen up against the globalist tyranny. As a consequence, Dugin proclaimed that anti-Americanism was no longer justified insofar as Americans were now determined to drain their own swamp.40
Donald Trump and Entryism
Although the campaign of Donald Trump mobilized the movement that has come be known as the alt-right, it was not he who created it. After all, the issues that animate the movement—concern over immigration, national economic decline, and political correctness—existed long before Trump announced his candidacy. As Francis Fukuyama opined, the real question is not why populism emerged in 2016, but why it took so long to manifest.41 Not unlike the Brexit referendum over the summer of 2016, Trump’s startling victory confirms that there is a rising tide of nationalism in the West. The increasing popularity of Marine Le Pen could soon lead to a nationalist government in France, which like England, might opt out of the European Union.
Although the white nationalist movement in America has endured for decades, it remained highly marginalized with virtually no influence on the mainstream culture and certainly not over public policy. The candidacy of Donald Trump, however, was the catalyst that enabled a disparate collection of groups, which included white nationalists, to coalesce in what has come to be known as the alt-right. Still, because of the movement’s ideological diversity, it would be a serious mischaracterization to label the alt-right as exclusively white nationalist.
In some quarters in the political left, Trump’s surprising electoral victory was viewed with great disdain, almost as a contemporary version of Kristallnacht, occasioning the most strident condemnation and revulsion in recent memory.42 To some observers, Bannon’s appointment as Trump’s chief strategist confirmed their fears that the far-right fringe has penetrated the White House.43 And some alt-right activists did not disabuse them of their trepidation. At his organization’s conference in Washington, D.C., soon after the election, Richard Spencer raised his glass in a toast and exclaimed to his audience: “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail Victory!” At this point, several of the attendees gave a celebratory Roman salute reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich.44 What came to be known as “hailgate,” earned him more notoriety and split the alt-right between moderates and hardliners.45
To date, however, Trump has eschewed explicit race-mongering, though he did say some unflattering things about some Mexican immigrants and voiced concern over radical Islam. Instead, Trump has promoted a form of civic nationalism that emphasizes “America first.” Although his rhetoric was often construed as impolitic on the campaign stump, he nevertheless reached out to all Americans irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed. In fact, he was the first major Republican presidential candidate in many years to have actually made a serious effort to attract African-American voters, pointing out that his proposed program of economic revitalization would create millions of new jobs for the chronically unemployed in America’s inner cities. It would be facile to characterize Trump’s victory as a “whitelash against a changing country” as described by CNN’s Van Jones.46 After all, roughly the same proportion of the white vote had gone to Mitt Romney four years earlier.47
Nevertheless, the election was racially-charged mainly in the mainstream media, which portrayed Trump and his supporters as bigoted. Ultimately, such depictions could become self-fulfilling prophecies as the scholar Walter Russell Mead observed:
The growing resistance among white voters to what they call “political correctness” and a growing willingness to articulate their own sense of group identity can sometimes reflect racism, but they need not always do so. People constantly told that they are racist for thinking in positive terms about what they see as their identity, however, may decide that racist is what they are, and that they might as well make the best of it. The rise of the so-called alt-right is at least partly rooted in this dynamic.48
The success of the Trump campaign demonstrated the potential influence of the alt-right in the coming years. At first blush, Trump’s victory in the Electoral College seems substantial, but his margin of victory in several key states was quite small.49 For that reason, support from every quarter he received—including the alt-right—was vitally important. Unlike other segments of the conservative movement, the alt-right never wavered in its support of Trump. And anecdotal evidence suggests that they were among his most avid foot soldiers in getting out the vote in both the primaries and general election.50 Moreover, the Trump campaign provided the opportunity for members of this movement to meet in a real world setting beyond their computer monitors and keyboards. His victory is sure to have instilled a great sense confidence in a movement that for so long has been maligned and marginalized. Shortly after the election Richard Spencer said that Trump’s victory was “the first step, the first stage towards identity politics for white people.”51 But if Trump does not deliver on his most emphatic campaign promises, such as building the wall and deporting undocumented aliens, the alt-right is likely to become disillusioned with him, not unlike some progressives who chastised Barack Obama for continuing to prosecute wars in the Middle East. In fact, before he even entered office, Spencer scaled back his enthusiasm for Trump because he was not focused enough on immigration and several of his appointments had connections to Goldman Sachs.52
Unlike old-school white nationalist movements, the alt-right has endeavored to create a self-sustaining counterculture, which includes a distinct vernacular, memes, symbols and a number of blogs and alternative media outlets. Taking a page from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, young alt-right activists have applied his tactics to conservative causes.53 The events of the year 2016 suggest that the movement has succeeded. Now that the movement has been mobilized and demonstrated its relevance, the alt-right is likely to grow, gaining a firmer foothold in both American politics and culture.
Conclusion: The Politics of Polarization
American political culture has historically been centrist. Consequently, the nativist elements of Trump’s campaign platform are likely to be watered-down if they are ever implemented. At times, President Trump will most surely find himself constrained by Congress, the Supreme Court, and state governments, not to mention the media and a whole host of private interests, such as major corporations whose operations he must encourage to remain in America to further his economic recovery plan.
As president, Trump now has the enormous task of restoring national unity. Soon after the election, numerous protests emerged in cities all across America. On inauguration day, more demonstrations followed mainly in Washington, but also a number of cities both in the United States and overseas under the rubric of the Women’s March.54 This development is unprecedented in American political culture with its longstanding record of the peaceful transition to power from one party to another. An ominous polarization threatens the very fabric of the nation.
Over a decade ago, the noted author Robert Kaplan prognosticated in his influential article, “The Coming Anarchy,” that it was not entirely clear that the United States would be able to survive exactly in its present form in the 21st century. As the quintessential multi-ethnic society, in contemporary America the concept of the nation state is becoming more fragile than it is in homogeneous nations.55 This same theme was taken up in 2004 when the political scientist, Samuel Huntington, released his book, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, in which he argued that the rise of multiculturalism and the demise of the assimilationist ethic could diminish the larger American national identity, which he believed was essential for the long-run survival of the country as a unified political entity.56 Whether Trump can live up to the high expectations that many Americans have pinned on him will depend on in large measure if he can forge some semblance of a national consensus.
And herein lies the great paradox of the alt-right. While white nationalists enthusiastically supported Trump—a candidate that repudiated identity politics and sought instead to restore national unity—they ultimately believe that their goals can only be achieved by the dissolution of the United States. Only in a Soviet-style break-up scenario could white nationalists establish the independent mono-racial states that they so desire. For this reason alone, the civic nationalism of Trump is likely to be at loggerheads with the ethno-nationalism of the alt-right at some point in the future. 
About the Author
Dr. George Michael received his Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy. He is an associate professor of criminal justice at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. Previously, he was an associate professor of nuclear counter-proliferation and deterrence theory at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of seven books: Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA, The Enemy of my Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right, Willis Carto and the American Far Right, Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator, Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance, Extremism in America (editor), and Preparing for Contact: When Humans and Extraterrestrials Finally Meet. In addition, his articles have been published in numerous academic journals.
References
Team Fix, Abby Ohlheiser, and Caitlin Dewey. 2016. “Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech, annotated.” The Washington Post, August 25, http://wapo.st/2jmHoI8
Posner, Sarah. 2016. “How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists,” Mother Jones, August 22, http://bit.ly/2bH0DK0
O’Brien, Luke. 2016. “My Journey to the Center of the Alt-right,” The Huffington Post, November 3, http://huff.to/2etgf7l
For more on Carto, see: Michael, George. 2008. Willis Carto and the American Far Right. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.
Siegel, Jacob. 2016. “The Alt-Right’s Jewish Godfather,” Tablet, November 29, http://bit.ly/2gKAxqZ
Francis, Samuel. 1997. Revolution from the Middle. Raleigh, NC: Middle American Press.
Imm, Jeffrey. 2010. “VDARE Friend Richard Spencer Starts New Group ‘Alternative Right’.” March 11, http://bit.ly/2jxEhR7
Not only does Taylor eschews conspiracy theories, in fact, several Jews have spoken at his American Renaissance conferences, including Michael Levin, Robert Weissberg, and Rabbi Mayer Schiller. For reaching out to like-minded Jews, Taylor has gained opprobrium in some quarters of the far right, but to his defenders, he is a soft-core gateway for people who are curious about the white nationalist movement. For more on Taylor see: Zeskind, Leonard. 2009. Blood & Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. New York: Farrar Staus Giroux, 367–380; and: Michael, George. 2003. Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA. New York: Routledge, 55–58.
See for example: Slattery, Patrick. 2016. “Whites dying off while Hispanics flood maternity wards— census data.” Davidduke.com June 10, http://bit.ly/2jmISlN
See for example: Longshanks, Sven. 2014. “The Genocidal EU Plot and the Jews Behind It.” The Daily Stormer, April 17, http://bit.ly/2jxwUJg
For a review and synopsis of his research and its influence on the far right, see: Michael, George. 2006. “Professor of Kevin MacDonald’s Critique of Judaism: Legitimate Scholarship or the Intellectualization of Anti-Semitism?” Journal of Church and State, Vol. 48, 779–806.
According to the most recent rankings of eBizMBA (an internet site that ranks the popularity of websites), his Infowars was ranked number seven for the “most popular political websites.” http://bit.ly/2k0GnY4, accessed January 22, 2017. It is worth mentioning that there have been some examples in which people outside of the political right have been attracted to or interacted favorably with Jones. In January of 2016, for example, Louis Farrakhan—the leader of the Nation of Islam—gave a lengthy and very cordial interview to Jones. They two found common ground on a number of issues including their shared opposition to globalism. Jones was highly critical of the presidency of George W. Bush and advanced a number of 9/11 conspiracy theories implicating the CIA which endeared himself with some people on the political left. For example, Jones was a guest on Jesse Ventura’s television show Conspiracy Theory. A former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota, Ventura has advanced a number of positions and conspiracy theories that are popular among those mainly in the political left.
The Illuminati was founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776. Its worldview was similar to that of Freemasonry. Although Bavarian authorities dissolved the organization in 1785, many conspiracy theorists allege that it still exists, albeit in different guises. See for example: Robertson, Pat. 1991. The New World Order. Dallas, TX: Word Publishing.
See for example: Martinez, Brandon. 2015. “Alex Jones vs. David Duke: Some Thoughts.” Counter-Currents, August 20, http://bit.ly/2jmOmwX
Dicker, Rachel. 2016. “Avoid These Fake News Sites at All Costs,” US News & World Report, November 14, http://bit.ly/2fdOe0y; Roy, Jessica. 2016. “Want to keep fake news out of your newsfeed? College professor creates list of sites to avoid.” Los Angeles Times, November 15, http://lat.ms/2f2QIlH; Mencimer, Stephanie. 2015. “PizzaGate Shooter Read Alex Jones. Here Are Some Other Fans Who Perpetrated Violent Acts.” Mother Jones, December 12, http://bit.ly/2gQJ5xa
Anglin, Andrew. 2016. “A Normie’s Guide to the Alt-right.” The Daily Stormer, August 31, http://bit.ly/2bDa4J2
See: Hess, Amanda. 2016. “For the Alt-Right, the Message Is in the 17 Punctuation,” New York Times, June 10, http://nyti.ms/2jdIafr and: Roy, Jessica. 2016. “How ‘Pepe the Frog’ went from harmless to hate symbol.” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pepe-the-frog-hate-symbol-20161011-snap-htmlstory.html
Stein, Joel. 2016. “How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet.” Time, August 18, http://ti.me/2bzZa9y
Meyers, Lawrence. 2011. “Politics Really is Downstream from Culture.” Breitbart, August 22, http://bit.ly/2kanAvI
Altman, Alex. 2016. “How Donald Trump is Bringing the Alt-Right to the White House.” Time, November 14, http://ti.me/2gxGgkF
Solov, Larry. 2015. “Breitbart News Network: Born in the USA, Conceived in Israel.” Breitbart, November 17, http://bit.ly/1NYURm4
Joel Stein, “Milo Yiannopoulos is the Pretty, Monstrous Face of the Alt-Right,” Bloomberg, September 15, 2016, http://bloom.bg/2cXKQLM
Yiannopoulos, Milo. 2016. “Science Proves It: Fat-Shaming Works,” Breitbart, July 5, http://bit.ly/29rzkFa; Yiannopoulos, Milo. 2015. “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,” Breitbart, December 8, http://bit.ly/1RV5KXu
Lees, Matt. 2016. “What Gamergate should have taught us about the ‘alt-right’.” The Guardian, December 1, http://bit.ly/2kBCFYa
Paglia, Camille. 1990. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New York: Vintage Books, 38.
Yiannopoulos argues that many of the younger activists are actually quite tolerant of homosexuality, race-mixing, and diversity. But they obtain gratification by watching the mayhem and outrage that erupts when they violate taboos in contemporary discourse. Bokhari, Allum and Milo Yiannopoulos. 2016. “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” Breitbart, March 29, http://bit.ly/1UDhGjA
O’Brien, Luke. 2016. “My Journey to the Center of the Alt-right.” The Huffington Post, November 3, http://huff.to/2etgf7l
Stein, Joel. 2016. “Milo Yiannopoulos is the Pretty Monstrous Face of the Alt-Right.” Bloomberg Business Week, September 15, http://bloom.bg/2cXKQLM
Morgan, Adam. 2017. “Publishing Milo Yiannopoulos’ book is wrong. My magazine is fighting back.” The Guardian, January 4, http://bit.ly/2iaCVZu
Anglin, Andrew. 2016. “The Final Solution to the Milo Problem.” The Daily Stormer, September 27, http://bit.ly/2jxt5nG
The fourteen words credo advanced by David Lane—“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”—became a call for action for racial activists around the globe. The number ‘88’ stands for the eighth letters of the alphabet—‘HH’—which signifies ‘Heil Hitler.’ For more on David Lane and his revolutionary strategy, see: “David Lane and the Fourteen Words.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 10, No. 1, (2009), 41–59.
Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” Breitbart, March 29, 2016, http://bit.ly/1UDhGjA
United States Census Bureau. 2015. “New Census Bureau Report Analyzes U.S. Population Projections,” March 3, http://bit.ly/1Eekwmx
George Michael, “Fighting for an Aryan Homeland: Harold Covington and the Northwest Front,” The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2014), 30–37.
Vegas Tenold, “The Little Führer: A Day in the Life of the Newest Leader of the White Nationalists,” Al Jazeera America, July 26, 2015, http://bit.ly/1MwfFkt
Zubrin, Robert. 2015. “Putin’s Rasputin: Meet Aleksandr Dugin, Mystical High Priest of Russian Fascism.” Skeptic, Vol. 20, No. 2.
The so-called identitarians endeavor to develop a form of white nationalist bereft of notions of supremacy. Furthermore, identitarians tend to be more socially liberal than the forbears.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
Dugin, Alexander. 2012. The Fourth Political Theory. London: Arktos.
Ahmari, Sohrab. 2016. “How the Kremlin Sees Trump’s Re-Reset with Moscow,” The Wall Street Journal, November 20, http://on.wsj.com/2g4X7vU
Francis Fukuyama, “US against the world? Trump’s America and the new global order,” Financial Times, November 11, 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/6a43cf54-a75d-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1
Coincidentally, Trump won the election on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. A number of commentators viewed this coincidence with a sense of foreboding. Cristina Silva, “What Is Kristallnacht? Trump Elected President On Nazi Anniversary,” International Business Times, November 9, 2016, http://bit.ly/2kuaVkT
Alex Altman, “How Donald Trump Is Bringing the Alt-Right to the White House,” Time, November 14, 2016, http://ti.me/2gxGgkF
Lombroso, Daniel and Yoni Applebaum. 2016. “‘Hail Trump!’: White Nationalists Salute the President-Elect.” The Atlantic, November 21, http://theatln.tc/2gajNZY
Gray, Rosie. 2017. “A ‘One-Stop Shop’ for the Alt-Right.” The Atlantic, January 12, http://theatln.tc/2jGkP1U
Ryan, Josiah. 2016. “‘This was a whitelash’: Van Jones’ take on the election results,” CNN, November 9, http://cnn.it/2fGnwA4
In fact, a slightly smaller percentage of whites (58 percent) voted for Trump in 2016 than for Romney (59 percent) in 2012. Trump managed to prevail in the election by garnering slightly higher proportions of black and Latino voters than Romney garnered in 2012. See: Tyson, Alec and Shiva Maniam. 2016. “Behind Trump’s victory: Divisions by race, gender, education.” November 9, http://pewrsr.ch/2fyPSvu
Russell Mead, Walter. 2017. “The Jacksonian Revolt.” Foreign Affairs, January 20, http://fam.ag/2jhYnfB
Meko, Tim, Denise Lu, and Lazaro Gamio. 2016. “How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states.” The Washington Post, November 11, http://wapo.st/2fLaxwO
Hananoki, Eric. 2016. “The Complete History Of Donald Trump’s Relationship With The White Nationalist Movement.” Media Matters for America, August 18, http://mm4a.org/2bfcbWJ
Downs, Caleb. 2016. “For white nationalists, Trump win a dream come true, says alt-right leader from Dallas.” Dallas News, November 16, http://bit.ly/2fJ34xE
Gray, Rosie. 2017. “A ‘One-Stop Shop’ for the Alt-Right.” The Atlantic, January 12, http://theatln.tc/2jGkP1U
Alinsky, Saul. 1972. Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Vintage Books.
Smith-Spark, Laura. 2017. “Protesters rally worldwide in solidarity with Washington march,” CNN, January 21, http://cnn.it/2kcUj4q
Robert, Kaplan. 1994. “The Coming Anarchy.” The Atlantic Monthly, February. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/
Huntington, Samuel. 2004. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.